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270 voices, "his majesty has forgot his kingly character."

"Not a whit! not a whit!" replied the king, "I'll be judged by this courteous knight. May not a monarch love a maid of low degree? Is not King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid, an adjudged case in point?"

"Professional! professional!—another forfeit," exclaimed the tumultuary nobility.

"Had not our royal predecessors," continued the monarch, exalting his sovereign voice to drown these disaffected clamours,–"Had they not their Jean Logies, their Bessie Carmichaels, their Oliphants, their Sandilands, and their Weirs, and shall it be denied to us even to name a maiden whom we delight to honour? Nay, then, sink state and perish sovereignty! for, like a second Charles V., we will abdicate, and seek in the private shades of life those pleasures which are denied to a throne."

So saying, he flung away his crown,